Ha, cool. I finally used Turntable for the first time just yesterday and I thought it was really fun.

But one of the things I was surprised was missing WAS the ability to just view a list of everyone in the room. It seems obvious that you'd want to see how many people are listening to you, and scan a sorted list to see if so-and-so is still in the room. Instead you have to mouseover everyone's avatar to see who's there, which is annoying.

So yeah, if a copycat helps spur the creation of features like that, I'm for it.

And from that, it doesn't seem that she's saying that the left-side of the photo is untouched. In fact, she's stating that the photo is digitally manipulated (obviously), but makes no claim about what specifically (or, which side) is manipulated.

"the so-called 'dramatization' of the product did not result from the use of the product by Forsling, but rather reflected [their] manipulation of a photograph." So all they're saying there is that the photo is touched-up. Where do they say that the left-half is untouched?

She's saying she didn't consent to that use of that photo, and that's where she notes that it was just based on a test photo. So that just sounds like a disagreement about who owns what rights to the photo.

That's the part that bugs me too. Mike is great at debunking reports and statistics, but it saddens me to see anything resembling willful blindness just because the spurious conclusion supports his views.

Mike, they're good views! I agree! But you can't emphasize the importance of scrutinizing evidence only some of the time.

The methodology is clear. Apple estimates that only 3% of the tracks "stored in the average iTunes user's digital library was purchased from the Apple music store."

WithMe takes this number, and notes "14% of the tracks in our users' libraries are digitally purchased". They note that since their users are sharers, they come to the conclusion "People Who Share Music Are 5x More Likely To Buy Digital Music". I suspect this hypothesis is true, but this "report" does absolutely nothing to show it.

Problems with their methodology:
1. iTunes reported the percentage of tracks in their library that were purchased in the *itunes store*, which WithMe then compares to a number of tracks simply *purchased digitally*. There are MANY ways to purchase music digitally outside of iTunes, so this comparison is meaningless.

2. Even worse, WithMe is making the claim that *iTunes users are not music sharers*. Why? Because they don't use WithMe. So they aren't sharing music.

Mike, I don't have to take a grain of salt with what they say, and neither do you! You can see clearly how they're backing up their claim, no salt necessary. This is nothing but an advertisement for their service.

You're doing a disservice to the real evidence of the benefits of sharing by including this PR piece in the ranks, even with your disclaimer.

Wow Ashley, thank you for taking the time to give more explanation. If nothing else it is a nice illustration of just how many copyright conflicts of this sort there have been in recent history. I was confused because I was sure there was some meaning I was missing, defining an analogy I didn't quite get. Thanks for your clarification.

I'm really confused... What is the connection to the countries shown in the infographic? I was expecting an explanation somewhere...

Are the populations or geographic size of the countries labeled proportional to the size of the networks they're labeled with? That can't be, because the UK is simply "compact disks" and the Pirate Bay is just in the ocean, and why would Germany be "proponents of copyright"?

Is this supposed to be some sort of analogy to WWII?

Seriously, I want to understand this infographic, and what point it's trying to make by connecting these sharing tools to European countries. I clicked through to the hat-tipped sites and I still don't see a coherent explanation of WHAT is going on in this infographic.

I love this kind of view and analysis, noting that there is a spectrum of possibilities, but you're still missing a key point I feel...

"with each shutdown and the community around each service fragments, does a certain percentage of that services users stop downloading?"

users who stop downloading != users who start buying.

"if 50% of napster's users "went legit", and with each subsequent shutdown, another 50% of the remaining users from each resulting service also stopped file sharing..."

If 50% of napster users never downloaded another song on another service, it does NOT imply that those people ever *bought* another album. The low-cost of using napster meant that more people downloaded music they would have never bought otherwise. That's the whole point.

So I love the desire to know what portion of users stopped downloading, but you're still implicitly equating stopping downloading with starting buying. In reality, I think that's probably ANOTHER percentage.

I agree that this is very stupid of the RIAA, and I adore Radiohead and have been happy to see them promoting free culture, but doesn't the fact that the RIAA's complaint is only over disc 2 (it seems) make it less fair to tie these takedowns to the pay-whatever-you-want-offering on disc 1?

After all, what was the price that Radiohead charged for disc 2 on WASTE? I don't remember. If they distributed for free then my whole point is fairly moot I suppose.

This may require a just a touch of clarity... Looking at the URLs in the RIAA complaint, it appears the only reference to In Rainbows was probably Disc 2, which was NOT part of the original pay-whatever-you-want deal. Disc 2 was sold with the distributed discbox months later, though Radiohead apparently did make them available for digital download on their W.A.S.T.E. site. I do not know if THAT download had a free option.

The IFPI complaint has URLs referring to In Rainbows, as well as the bonus disc.

That point may be nitpicky, but it may present a wrinkle as far as who owned which copyrights on which songs from In Rainbows? At any rate, the RIAA still clearly is not respecting the artists' wishes in this case, as you note, Mike.

How exactly does EMI bar Ok Go from reposting the video themselves on another youtube account? Ostensibly, they just say "no you can't do that" and Ok Go abides. If so, why does EMI "allow" Ok Go to post the same video on Vimeo?

Mike, I've seen you say countless times that a decrease in file-sharing does not imply an increase in music/movie sales. I think it's an astute and clear argument that not every song downloaded would have been a song purchased...

However, doesn't saying "like when Napster was shut down or with Sweden's IPRED law, there may be a temporary bounceback in sales" admit that a decrease in file-sharing causes an increase in sales?